Israeli forces raid Bethlehem, seize top activist

Reuters News Service

Published 5:30 am, Monday, May 27, 2002

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - Israeli troops swept back into Bethlehem on Monday after a wave of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks and detained a senior activist from an offshoot of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

An Israeli security source said Ahmed Mughrabi, 28, was responsible for dozens of shootings and explosions in the Bethlehem area, including the firing of mortar bombs at the Jewish settlement of Gilo.

Palestinians in Bethlehem identified Mughrabi as a senior figure in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Israeli forces also detained two other activists from within Fatah, including Mughrabi's brother. The source said all three helped plan a suicide bombing that killed two Israelis in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Letzion on May 22.

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Witnesses and Palestinian security sources said dozens of jeeps and armoured troop carriers rolled into Bethlehem and surrounding villages before dawn, about 24 hours after the army ended an earlier raid in the area just south of Jerusalem.

An Israeli military source said troops had entered Manger Square in the heart of the city to prevent militants from taking refuge in the Church of the Nativity, built on the site revered by Christians as the place where Jesus was born.

Palestinian witnesses said about 80 soldiers conducted house-to-house searches and arrested 10 people in the Deheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem after imposing a curfew.

"SAFEGUARDING GAINS"

Tensions have risen following the Israeli raids and four Palestinian suicide bombings last week, complicating diplomatic efforts to revive peace talks and end violence accompanying the 20-month-old Palestinian revolt against occupation.

The army said the new raids were designed to "safeguard the gains" of a more than month-long offensive in the West Bank that it said was meant to root out networks of militant bombers.

Israel declared the offensive over earlier this month but has since sent troops in and out of Palestinian cities at will.

Israeli forces that pushed into the West Bank city of Qalqilya on Sunday pulled out on Monday after detaining five people, Palestinian witnesses said. The army announced over loudspeakers that a curfew it had imposed was over.

"The increasing number of (suicide bomb) alerts...is of great concern. It compels us to be taut like a spring in every place from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south (of the West Bank)," army spokesman Ron Kitrey said.

Arafat said such raids could delay reforms of his Palestinian Authority which are sought -- for differing reasons -- by Palestinians, Israel and world leaders.

Arafat, who last week promised legislative and presidential elections by next winter, demanded on Sunday that Israel "finish quickly the siege of all our cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza" to facilitate preparations for the voting.

SETTLERS SET RECRUITMENT GOAL

While the army swept through Bethlehem, the Benjamin Regional Council, representing settlements on Israeli-occupied land in the West Bank north of Jerusalem, announced a campaign to recruit 1,000 new families to live in them this year.

"We want to give a renewed push to the communities and revitalise them," Elazar Sela, head of the council's recruitment project, told Israel Radio.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the government had agreed to "natural growth," a term Israel uses for expanding existing settlements on land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, but pledged not to allow new ones to be established.

"I will not let that happen," he told the radio, saying it was the first he had heard of the plan to seek new settlers, who like other Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza would be eligible for government grants, subsidised mortgages and tax breaks.

Some 200,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, home to more than three million Palestinians, in settlements that many countries consider illegal under international law and a serious obstacle to a Middle East peace settlement.

In Bethlehem, troops fanned out across the city and searched houses for militants. No clashes were reported there or in neighbouring towns such as Beit Jala, from where militants have fired at Gilo. Israelis consider Gilo to be part of Jerusalem.

Israeli forces burst into Bethlehem on April 2 at the start of the West Bank offensive and stayed for more than a month.

Some militants, including men on Israel's most-wanted list, took refuge in the Church of the Nativity during that raid, and remained there for more than five weeks until a deal was reached to send 39 of them to the Gaza Strip or into exile in Europe.

At least 1,372 Palestinians and 480 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising.